Author
Topic: I am turning into a creationist ;D (Read 10256 times)

I have just made some amazing discoveries. For ages I had wondered about creationist science, but hadn't had the chance or bothered to check it out more than absolutely marginally (if at all). My first pastor said that the theory of evolution and not taking Genesis literally is a possibility. However, I ran into many Orthodox who literally believe the creation accounts. I wondered how this could be, given all the scientific evidence for evolution and the universe being 5 billion years old. Well, what if the theories could be debunked?

I recently found an excellent and systematic "textbook" in Serbian, available on one website, written by a priest with a scientific background. IT IS WAAAAY KEWL!!!!!!!! It challenges various things that science has to say against Genesis. It shows how modern science is full of falsehood and badly interpreted data. For a less systematic but still informative website in English, I suggest you look at <<www.creationists.org>>. And there are other books and websites on this subject. Did you know that there are works of cave art and Inca art that apparently depict dinosaurs (for example Inca stones with eg. a diplodocus and a French cave carving that albeit crudely may depict a mammoth in a head to head collision with a dino?) I could go on about what I've discovered but haven't got the time.

N.B. just because I mention creationists.org doesn't mean I would read that and other sites at 100% face value: some of the things in it (eg. Bible quotes etc) may not necessarily be correct interpretations, as they may not have been written by Orthodox people. Just a note.

While I have my evolutionary doubts, most people shouldn't be entering into this conflict.

These battles, out in the open, are inevtiably dominated by two groups who are both doggedly wrong. First, there are the atheistic types who dogmatize evolution as a rejoinder to religious faith. This position is questionable in its science; and in science, if your opinions are questionable they might as well be wrong.

Basically they make two scientific mistakes. First, they assume that they know enough about the mechanisms of evolution. They don't. There's a lot of speculation about how genetic change enters into this, and it seems to me, based on what they are finding out about cloning (namely, that it doesn't work very well on animals) that there are some fundamental elements of genetic transmission that they don't know anything about. Also, they really don't know much about how this change could produce new structures.

Second, it's pretty clear that they don't know much about what forces may or may not drive evolution. This is something that is very controversial in the field, and Steven Gould for one has attacked the Established Position at length. I don't agree with him entirely, but it's clear that "survival of the fittest" isn't all that's going on.

(As a parenthesis, there is a prevalent lack of appreciation of human breeding as it plays a part in the domestication of animals.)

These people make a lot of metaphysical mistakes too, but their main problem is that they presume that they know a whole lot more than they actually do know.

On the other hand, we get the Genesis literalists. These people immediately get into trouble because you can't get all the way through the second chapter without pulling contradictions out of the text. And one simply cannot read the rest of scripture in this way.

What's worse is that, since most of these people are terribly naive about textual reading, they can't do proper science. Anyone who tries to walk up and prove that the dinosaurs are not old is going to fail miserably. There's simply too much good science that isn't going to be refuted by people who are unlearned. The evidence of a series of different forms and creatures, of which man is a relatively late example, is not ever going to go away, and any work that tries to do so is trash and not worth considering.

Both of these groups criticize each other viciously, and both of them are in essence correct about the other. The problem is that knowing this doesn't help. Yes, the one camp is a bunch of arrogant atheists with axes to grind; yes, the other camp is ignorant and willing to do bad science in Jesus' name. That doesn't get you anywhere on the question.

Where it does leave you is in a middle ground where some sort of development is accepted, but in which there is plenty of room for God direct the outcome as much as He needs to.

Creationism does violence to the text of Genesis. It yankes it out of its historical and literary context and forces a meaning upon it which God did NOT intend it to have. It keeps the reader from reading the text as the word of God and turns it into a textbook. If you want to believe the world was created in 6 days, fine, it can't be proven or disproven. But creation "science" just tries to account for everything with some rather wild theories.

Just last year I ended a rather heated argument between a "fundamentalist" and myself over 'Creationism vs. Evolution' with the following question:"Why couldn't the Lord have CREATED evolution?"From the look on my opponent's face I knew I scored big. (It's a beautiful sight to see the 'lights' turn on.)

The article linked below addresses cosmology from an Orthodox perspective, but interpolation to Darwin should be easy. I also have a half-finished (sigh) monograph specifically addressing 'Darwinism' (prompted by aforementioned argument ) and I'll dig it up if necessary.

Science is never content to say it knows everything but always strives to push the boundaries of knowledge. What this means is that we will no doubt be seeing better theories than Darwin's coming to light in the future as we better understand the fields of genetics etc. They will always fall short IMO because they almost all try to describe a universe devoid of God.

There is nothing wrong with trying to understand the natural laws (in reality, supranatural) of God's creation, but it is an exercise in futility if we leave God out of the picture.

We exist, the universe, time, space, light, matter, because God wills it out of His boundless love. If He so willed it, everything would cease to be in an instant without so much as a squeak or pop, let alone a bang.

His "challenge" essentially proves that any sufficiently pig-headed person can resist any explanation thrown at him, no matter how good or bad it is. The correct answer, of course, is to challenge back the phrase "revolves around". [physics geeking] Let's ignore the rest of the universe and concentrate on the solar system. I'm going to make a couple of assumptions to save time: that Newtonian mechanics works on an interplanetary level, and that space is essentially flat on the scale which we are working at (and thus Euclidean geometry works). (That interplanetary space flight works is a sufficient proof of these principles.)

OK, so what does "revolves around" mean? Well, what it should mean is that, in an inertial frame of reference, one body is essentially standing still, and the other is moving around it. "Inertial frame" means looking at the system so that the net momentum is zero, or in other words, that the system as a whole isn't going anywhere.

One can deduce the position of the various bodies through astronomical observation, and indeed what one finds is that, if you take the sun as a fixed point, the planets move in Keplerian orbits in accordance with Newtonian mechanics-- which is to say, in ovals. (Well, not exactly, because there are various irregularities which turn out to be due to the gravitational interactions of the planets. This is going to be long enough as it is, for crying out loud.) This motion also gives the mass of the sun, and we already know the mass of the earth.

OK, so now we take the pin out of the sun and sum up all the momentum of the planets, and apply enough reciprocal motion to the sun to make the whole thing zero out. And what do we find? That the sun is hardly moving at all!! [/physics geeking]

OK-- this is something we've known for, oh, 250 years-- Newton himself, after all, went through the same gyrations. The only way to make Earth the center of the universal inertial frame is to posit that the rest of the universe has the precise mass and motion to counterpoise the required motion of the sun. At this point my brain starts to hurt, and surely one cannot prove this to be true (and if you keep pursuing the astronomy it appears that it isn't true).

So why is he issuing this challenge? Well, because (a) he's a biblical literalist, and thus can't get past Genesis 2 without double-talk; (b) he is a religious authoritarian who cannot accept that churches do issue opinions when they are incompetent to do so; and (c) he swallows all the bogus implications of a Copernican universe that the secularist extremists like to work out-- hook, line, and sinker!

A footnote: I make some attempt to follow what the cosmologists are up to, and of late I have noted a deeply speculative quality to their speech. Much of what they are saying isn't really scientific, and increasingly they fall into language that smells very religious.

It's also clear that we are running into one of those periods where understanding has been hugely outstripped by information.

I think Keble makes a very good point about the false dichotomy presented in this debate, and that the advocates of the two extreme positions are both guilty as framing it as such.

I believe the Intelligent Design movement offers a much stronger challenge to Darwinism, both scientifically and metaphysically, without falling into the trap of having to defend Bishop Usher's young Earth chronology. I tend to believe the Earth is much younger than commonly taught, but, based on the evidence, I also think it's significantly older than the 6000 years preached by strict young earth creationists.

Just last year I ended a rather heated argument between a "fundamentalist" and myself over 'Creationism vs. Evolution' with the following question:"Why couldn't the Lord have CREATED evolution?"From the look on my opponent's face I knew I scored big. (It's a beautiful sight to see the 'lights' turn on.)

The article linked below addresses cosmology from an Orthodox perspective, but interpolation to Darwin should be easy. I also have a half-finished (sigh) monograph specifically addressing 'Darwinism' (prompted by aforementioned argument ) and I'll dig it up if necessary.

I think one must be careful to differentiate "evolution", which may simply mean "change with time", from "Darwinism", which refers to that grand metaphysical claim that all living things are descended from one single cell organism via undirected natural causes. While there is certainly empiric evidence for the former on a limited scale, proving the latter is much more problematic scientifically. Also the former is perfectly compatible with Christian theism while the latter is clearly antithetical to it.

I agree, Innocent. This isn't a binary situation. Creation, what little we know of it, is a rich and marvelous and incredible thing. Just looking at a small area, I know that *I* wouldn't have been able to come up with some of the creatures found in the Burgess Shale like Opabinia or Anomalocaris or Wiwaxia, but God made them and much more. There's a whole universe out there and the Heavens are telling the Glory of God.

Sorry, I'll calm down now.

Just last night at dinner, we had both science and religion while talking about where the moon came from, black-body radiation and the Big Bang which came to "God said, "Let there be Light!".

Ebor

edited for typing errors

« Last Edit: November 11, 2003, 04:08:17 PM by Ebor »

Logged

"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

Back in my Protestant days I was often scolded for suggesting that the earth might be a lot older than just 6,000 years.

Quote

That's what would happen to me. My colleague is a bit of a fundie...each time he brings up this or any other religious-based topics I'll quickly divert the subject onto music or the weather.

Anyway back to Sungenis, in one of his papers he gives his interpretation of Genesis 1 which I thought was interesting:

As for the meaning of YOM in Genesis, the textual and grammatical evidence is quite overwhelming that it refers to one solar day of 24 hours. First, whenever YOM is used with an ordinal number in Scripture, it never refers to an indefinite or long period of time. In Genesis 1, there are six ordinal numbers enumerated: the first day...the second day...the third day...and so on to the sixth day. There is no instance in Hebrew grammar in which "day" preceded by an ordinal number is understood figuratively or as a long period of time. One of the most famous Hebrew grammars known to scholars, Gesenisus' Hebrew Grammar, elaborates on this point (Editor E. Kautzsch, second English edition, revised by A. E. Crowley, 1980, pp. 287-292; 432-437).

The most conclusive evidence that the word "day" in Genesis 1 is to be interpreted literally as a 24-hour period is confirmed by the consistent use of the phrase "and there was evening and morning," which appears in each of the days of Creation (cf., Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). The use of "evening and morning" in Scripture shows that it always refers to the sequence of darkness and light comprising a single period of a day, a 24 hour period. Outside of Genesis, there are only eight appearances of "evening and morning" in Scripture (cf., Ex 16:8-13; 27:21; 29:39; Lv 24:3; Nm 9:21; Dan 8:26).

There are some cases in which the words "morning" or "evening" appear separately with the word "day," some of which refer to a literal solar day and some which are indefinite of time. But in Genesis, and the other aforementioned passages "evening and morning" are coupled together and are specified as one unit of time.

If the writer of Genesis intended to teach that YOM meant an indefinite period of time, such that he desired to convey long ages of process and change, he had numerous ways to convey such an idea. He could have used the plural YOMIM, as Mr. Young suggested of Num 20:15, or as Moses does in Genesis 1:14 ("let them be for days and for years") or Genesis 3:14 ("dust shall you eat all the days of your life"). But even then we must interject that, of the 702 uses of the plural YOMIM in the Old Testament, literal days are always in view.

This also sounds interesting:

The truth is that the Fathers and doctors hardly diverge at all from Protestant creationists...

I have my doubts about evolutionary theory. I simply cannot believe that all of this complexity arose purely by chance. If evolution took place I think it would have had to have been intiated and guided by God.I do not think young earth creationism is even remotely reasonable. I personally find the Framework interpretation of Genesis 1 very convincing.

I have my doubts about evolutionary theory. I simply cannot believe that all of this complexity arose purely by chance. If evolution took place I think it would have had to have been intiated and guided by God.I do not think young earth creationism is even remotely reasonable. I personally find the Framework interpretation of Genesis 1 very convincing.

Well, it seems to me that some people on this forum are less inclined toward creationism than those on Nicholas' Orthodox forum or the Orthodox Converts mailing list! Anyway, the creationist treatise I found gives very reasonable arguments for the world being only 6000 years old. It systematically calls into question much of what science has taught about the origins of the world, from carbon dating to geological earth layers. It suggests that some of modern science is based on assumptions that can be proven false. I don't know if it's necessarily true, but what this tract states seems amazingly feasible.

Well, it seems to me that some people on this forum are less inclined toward creationism than those on Nicholas' Orthodox forum or the Orthodox Converts mailing list!

I haven't found anything in the E-Cafe about this, but I have to say that it would be a sad commentary on the quality of discourse there if they predominately endorse creationism.

Quote

Anyway, the creationist treatise I found gives very reasonable arguments for the world being only 6000 years old. It systematically calls into question much of what science has taught about the origins of the world, from carbon dating to geological earth layers. It suggests that some of modern science is based on assumptions that can be proven false.

All of these arguments are junk. I don't even have to read them to know that, but if you would care to send me a few, I will gladly debunk them.

Quote

I don't know if it's necessarily true, but what this tract states seems amazingly feasible.

It's like this:

Let's look at Robert Sungeris again for a moment. This man is supposed to be a great Catholic apologist, but his advocacy of geocentrism is just whacky, and his "defense" of it is junk reasoning. It's not just that he makes mistakes of logic; it's that the whole form of his "reasoning" is incoherent. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that a scientific instrument which my father helped design is now on its way out of the solar system (it's the one on Voyager that is in the news now) is sufficient proof that the scientists know what they're doing and that anyone who disagrees with their model of planetary motion is incompetent to do so.

The situation in geology is not so cut-and-dried, but if you are having trouble telling the bad thinking from the good, isn't it time to defer to experts instead of to obscure Serbian tracts?

I agree about Sungenis. As far as justification or sola scriptura or the nature of the eucharist, his writing is great. But when it comes to science he's just plain batty!Personally I simply cannot see how virtually every scientific field (biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, etc.) could all be wrong on the age of the earth. It's just too much to believe.

The only argument that makes any kind of sense to me is that the universe was created as a mature entity with complex systems already in motion. So while only moments old, it had the apparent age of something that had already been in existence for millions of years, just as Adam appeared to be many years old at his creation despite no having existed moments before. FOr example, when God put lights in the sky, he not only created the stars, but also the light that had been apparently streaming from them for millions of years, otherwise they would not have been visible for many years until light from them finally began reaching the earth. Light travels fast, but it is not instantanious.

The creation of the universe was a supranatural event so we should expect there to be apparent contradictions in the physical evidence. This is not unlike that seen by a doctor examining a patient who has just been miraculously healed completely of terminal cancer.

We seem to be on the same wavelength, John. Here are a few of the arguments against traditional science given by the textbook:

1) scientists base part of their claim that the Earth is zillions of years old on studying geological layers of earth/soil. They assume that all the layers developed at the same pace as they do today, timing the ages of the various layers at this pace, whereas some may have developed far quicker (during creation, the Flood etc).

2) in a layer supposedly 200 million or so years old, a fossil of a MODERN WOMAN was found! Similarly, dinosaur footprints have been found overlapping with human ones. The book argues that dinosaurs died out after climactic changes that occurred after the flood. Noah could have put dino eggs on the Ark, thus saving space.

3) evolution of animals & humans seems to be disproven by it being hard to find "missing links". I myself once thought that a primitive bird fossil, Archeopteryx, was like a missing link between birds and reptiles, because although it had feathers and wings, it also had a long bony tail, claws on its wings and a beak/snout with a set of teeth. However, the book indicates that this fossil's similarity to modern birds is closer than some scientists will have it be, that for example modern birds rarely have claws and that at any rate, it was found in the same layer as more modern-looking bird remains, so it couldn't have been their ancestor. This seems logical when I think of a modern mammal, the playpus, which has a "beak" and lays eggs, yet is not said to have evolved from birds. Similarly, the book mentions that fossils said to be human ancestors are really apes (when some of them are examined, they may indeed, I'd say, seem closer to apes than to people, eg. the "Australopithecus" and at any rate, many of the supposed "hominid species" exist only as VERY fragmentary remains. HomoErectus and Neanderthal people seem to really just have been races of modern humans, and the author mentions that if you gave a Neanderthal a shave and a haircut, he would look quite different from normal drawings of "primitive man" - his illustration shows him as looking just like, say, a modern North African.

4) I could go on with better arguments than these based on astronomy, geology and biology, but being pressed for time, let me just mention Noah's Ark. The book says that since the Ark landed on Mount Ararat, it got frozen in the ice there. But this ice sometimes melts. During WWI, Russian aviators saw the Ark from their airplanes and St. Tsar Nicholas ordered and expedition there. They photographed the remains of the Ark, and even found Noah's sacrificial altar. Alas, the Bolsheviks soon came to power, and destroyed their findings. Note that, according to the Bible, the Ark was humongous, quite longer than a soccer field, and had ideal dimensions for a ship, which mere mortals would likely not have been able to calculate with the knowledge of the day. It could easily have held many animal species if the specimens were taken young, as well as provisions and living quarters.

Similarly, dinosaur footprints have been found overlapping with human ones.

That would be Glen Rose, Texas. The original footprints are in fact all dinosaur footprints, some of which are elongated and therefore have an extremely superficial resemblance to human prints. Just to help things out, the locals have apparently been making fake footprints to sell to the tourists. Here is an example of typical decent examination of the prints.

This is a particularly egregious example of bad creationist science-- so bad that, as I am told, most creationists B.I. (Before Internet) had abandoned it. Now, of course, the internet allows nonsense persist indefinitely; but it also allows all of us to look the stuff up and find out the truth. In this case there are many, many sites exposing the "footprints". So why should I take some Serbian tract's word on the matter?

I should also note that the whole discussion of these footprints presumes that the processes that the scientists postulate actually do take place. Dinosaurs do step in mud, which is covered by other sediments, and these are progressively turned to rock. One may quibble about the time frame, but considering that recorded Egyptian history covers something like 2/3s the supposed creationist age of the earth, there's very little place to put the dinosaurs in this time span.

Then we have the ark.

Quote

4) I could go on with better arguments than these based on astronomy, geology and biology, but being pressed for time, let me just mention Noah's Ark. The book says that since the Ark landed on Mount Ararat, it got frozen in the ice there. But this ice sometimes melts. During WWI, Russian aviators saw the Ark from their airplanes and St. Tsar Nicholas ordered and expedition there. They photographed the remains of the Ark, and even found Noah's sacrificial altar. Alas, the Bolsheviks soon came to power, and destroyed their findings. Note that, according to the Bible, the Ark was humongous, quite longer than a soccer field, and had ideal dimensions for a ship, which mere mortals would likely not have been able to calculate with the knowledge of the day. It could easily have held many animal species if the specimens were taken young, as well as provisions and living quarters.

Says who?? This is just an urban legend. Which Russian aviators? What are their names? Who recorded their story? How do we know the Bosheviks did anything-- especially on Turkish territory?

The fundamental problem in all of this is that there is no intellectual dialogue going on here. It's all just a bunch of unsupportable assertions, propped up by references to dubious authorities. It doesn't survive perr review at all.

And it all is really based on the theory that evolutionary theory is like a sweater knitted from a single strand, where one can break the fabric at one point, and it will all fall apart. But that just isn't so. Against these few feeble attempts at refutation stands an enormous mountain of corroboration, and it is a fabric of many threads. That there are holes, nobody denies. But the fabric holds in spite of them.

erracht, I didn't say that I hold to the explanation that I gave, I only said that it is the only one that seems to make any kind of sense to me.

Generally I am pretty non-commital on this issue as, like Keble has shown, there is too much bad science and unsubstantiated information involved in many of the creationist arguments. I am not sufficiently well enough educated in the scientific disciplines to comment, so I generally keep my mouth shut on this topic lest I find that my foot has suddenly found its way there

I believe God created the universe and leave it at that. Genesis was not written as a scientific treatise on the subject so I try to avoid reading it as such.

Genesis, while not a technical "scientific treatise", seems to be at least written in the form of a historical narrative. While there may be some poetic expressions used particularly in the creation accounts, the events are depicted in the context of the entire Scripture as having actually taken place. For example, Adam is listed in the geneology of Jesus along with other historical figures, and Jesus is contrasted with the first Adam in Romans 5. Christ makes reference to Abel and Noah and others from Genesis and considers them historical. Both Jesus and Peter (2 Peter 3) make reference to the flood of Noah, and the latter seems to consider it a universal deluge and not a local one. What is more, I've read several comments from ECFs regarding the events of Genesis as being historical (Origen and Clement of Alexandria may have been exceptions, from what I remember).

OTOH, this certainly doesn't prove that the whole of earth's history can be squeezed into the 6000 years advocated by many young earth creationists. We seem to have good historical and archealogical evidence for human civilization going back at least 10,000 years. The Bible itself seems to show evidence of gaps in some of its geneologies making an exact Biblically derived chronology of the world impossible. Plus there are the uniformitarian geological dating methods (especially the radiometric dating methods) that indicate the earth itself may be about 4.5 billion years old.

However, though these methods are widely accepted, they seem to be based on some unprovable naturalistic assumptions which may raise questions about their ultimate validity. What I mean is that the assumptions behind some of these methods (ie constant decay rates; no initial "daughter" elements present; no effect from external physical processes) seem to (me, at least) rule out a priori singularities (or "catastrophies") which could conceivably alter the chronology derived from such uniformitarian methods. In other words, these dating methods may dismiss acts of divine fiat (creation or creations and supernatural judgements such as the Deluge) out of hand by the nature of their presumed starting premises. However, if indeed a universal flood occurred, then this would seem to have had profound effects on geological processes making uniformitarianism ultimately untenable. How much of an effect this would have on dating the earth I don't know, because even an universal flood may not be able to explain all the geophysical data available. I'm not a geologist so I'll have to plead ignorance.

So while many "arguments" for a very young earth have been discredited, based on the above considerations I remain skeptical that the earth is as old as currently believed. This is not because I'm anti-science; it's because I question some of the metaphysical assumptions underlying the methodology of secular scientists. (Which is consistent with the moniker, "Doubting Thomas" )

Amen. The topic is interesting and all, but in the end, I wonder sometimes why we care about this stuff so much. There is plenty of stuff in the Bible to keep us busy: the Commandments, the Psalms, the Gospels, etc.

As a geologist, and only recently baptised orthodox christian, I find this topic extremely interesting. I applaud those who question the things they hear, but I would emphasize that one must question everything equally.

The basic problem here is that there is a ton of information that one must be familiar with in order to make an educated decision on this topic, and most people don't have the 10 or more years that it takes to acquaint themselves thoroughly with this subject, so they must listen to what other people have to say, then decide who to believe.

Speaking for those of us who have spent 10 years or more learning about these and related topics, I will tell you that there is NO scientific debate on the subject of the age of the Earth. Science prides itself on questioning EVERYTHING, and if I, as a geologist, could prove that Earth was younger than 4.5 billion years, I would do it in a hearbeat, and become famous in the process. So the fact that there is no scientific debate on this subject at all should tell you that either all the scientists are conspiring to push an athiestic dogma or that there is overwhelming scientific proof that the Earth is in fact 4.5 billion years old.

If you espouse the former option, please remember that a large portion of the scientists working today, and throughout history, were and are churchgoing christians.

As for evolution, one thing that frustrates scientists to no end in this debate is that critics only poke holes in the existing theory but do not put forward theories that explain all of the evidence. It is remarkable to me that Darwin proposed his theory without any knowledge of genetics, and all new discoveries in that field have confirmed and strengthened his theory.

If you want to doubt what you hear, which as a thinking person you should absolutely do, then please keep an open mind and look for cogent arguments on both sides, then make your own decision.

Amen. The topic is interesting and all, but in the end, I wonder sometimes why we care about this stuff so much. There is plenty of stuff in the Bible to keep us busy: the Commandments, the Psalms, the Gospels, etc.

One of the drip...drip...drips of fundagelicalism that drove me nutty was the near obsession with this subject (and others) when I knew there just HAD to be more to Christianity.

As for evolution, one thing that frustrates scientists to no end in this debate is that critics only poke holes in the existing theory but do not put forward theories that explain all of the evidence. It is remarkable to me that Darwin proposed his theory without any knowledge of genetics, and all new discoveries in that field have confirmed and strengthened his theory.

That's somewhat of an overstatement, IMHO. There is a growing movement of scientists who not only demonstrate glaring flaws in certain aspects of Darwinian mythology but who also seek to offer positive criteria for identifying intelligent design.

The thing that cracks me up about creationism is the absolute insistence upon a literal 6 24 hour day creation IGNORING that time was not created til the 4th day. sheesh.

Logged

"Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say 'conservative' the way people say 'child molester.' Leftist thinking is just the culture that I live in and the culture the reporters who populate the mainstream media

Actually, I'm inclined to believe that there are 3 seperate creations discussed in Genesis. 2 in Gen1, and a third in Gen2. But that's just my view on it.

Logged

"Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say 'conservative' the way people say 'child molester.' Leftist thinking is just the culture that I live in and the culture the reporters who populate the mainstream media

The thing that cracks me up about creationism is the absolute insistence upon a literal 6 24 hour day creation IGNORING that time was not created til the 4th day. sheesh.

That's an interesting statement. I might agree with you if you really meant that the SUN and MOON weren't created until the 4th day, thereby arguing against literal 24-hour days. TIME, however, was created at the beginning or else it would be meaningless to speak of the first, second, and third "days" PRECEDING the fourth "day"

Time is a function of the sun and moon; therefore there cannot be Time without the sun and moon.

Scripture says that to the Lord a day is like 1000 years and 1000 years like a day. Remember: the text in question, was written by a finite man trying to understand an infinite God.

Day is more than just a measure of time. It is also a reference to a period of existence or prominence of a person or thing.

Logged

"Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say 'conservative' the way people say 'child molester.' Leftist thinking is just the culture that I live in and the culture the reporters who populate the mainstream media